Licenses for The $3 Bar in Providence revoked after fatal fight described

PROVIDENCE — A Federal Hill bar lost its licenses Thursday after the city’s public safety commissioner told licensing officials that the bar’s staff did nothing to quell an escalating disturbance on July...

PROVIDENCE — A Federal Hill bar lost its licenses Thursday after the city’s public safety commissioner told licensing officials that the bar’s staff did nothing to quell an escalating disturbance on July 23 and that employees might have watched as a 33-year-old Glocester man suffered a fatal beating in a rear parking lot.

“We have evidence that shows that some of those employees were there in the back of that … bar and they may have observed the entire assault,” Public Safety Commissioner Steven Paré told the Board of Licenses.

“They didn’t try to mitigate it,” he said, referring to the staff of the Atwells Avenue establishment known as The $3 Bar. “They didn’t try to stop it. They pushed it out the back door and let one person eventually kill another.”

Paré did not refer to either of the two men — either the victim, Jonathan Stack, or the man charged with killing Stack, 48-year-old Daniel Lastarza — by name.

But he did offer a blow-by-blow account of how an argument over a junk vehicle escalated into a fatal beating. In his testimony, Paré also faulted the staff of The $3 Bar for failing to break up the fight and for neglecting to telephone police.

Paré provided his comments after reviewing the case and looking at video from inside the restaurant. When questioned by the lawyer for The $3 Bar, Peter J. Petrarca, Paré acknowledged that this latest account clashed with some initial comments and observations that he made to The Providence Journal during an interview on July 28.

Petrarca immediately appealed the board’s decision to revoke the licenses of The $3 Bar, calling Paré’s testimony “hearsay,” noting that the board had made the decision without interviewing any detectives or witnesses.

Paré gave his testimony during an emergency hearing held late in the afternoon soon after the Board of Licenses convened a previously scheduled session to follow up action it had taken last week.

On July 27, the panel had suspended the bar’s licenses, soon after the victim, Jonathan Stack, succumbed to injuries inflicted by a two-by-four. At that time, the panel also held the establishment in contempt, and it planned to seek a court order that would force the owner, Gianfranco Marrocco, to turn over video and other information related to a different brawl on July 26.

On Monday, the state Department of Business Regulation “remanded” the case to the licensing panel, according to the board’s lawyer, Louis DeSimone. DeSimone told the board that the DBR, which holds appellate authority over license matters, sent the matter back for a decision “so that there could be some type of appealable issue.”

After receiving that guidance, the board opted to move toward a decision without any of the video evidence it had pursued last week. It also decided to delve deeper into the July 23 fight over the junk vehicle.

Stack and another man, a tow truck operator, had made plans to take possession of the vehicle, Paré said. Money had been paid for the right to tow the vehicle away, but, earlier in the day, the two men learnedthey were dealing with a scam.

About two hours later, said Paré, they set out to find two men whom they regarded as being involved in the scam, including Lastarza.

They found both men in The $3 Bar and a heated argument began, said Paré.

Both Stack and the tow operator were escorted out the front door of the Atwells Avenue bar by management and by a person who appeared to be another patron, Paré said. In a matter of minutes, both men returned to the bar and the dispute soon moved to the rear of the bar and into a back parking lot, with the bartender following.

Stack and the tow truck operator fought Lastarza’s companion

two on one and they were “getting the better of” him, said Paré. The brawl went “onto the ground” in the presence of a bartender, Paré said.

Lastarza, who had initially fled, returned and saw his friend taking a beating, Paré said. He picked up a two-by-four and hit Stack with it, according to Paré.